


Clip Show

by longhairshortfuse



Series: One Shot Wonders [6]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Fluff, M/M, spoilers for [Best of?], spoilers for ep67
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 04:32:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3882457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longhairshortfuse/pseuds/longhairshortfuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil really, really wants to go on vacation, but Station Management won't let him out until he has recorded a "Best of..." clip show to play in his absence.</p><p>It seems like a monumental task, but Carlos has a solution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clip Show

“Hey honey, you got time off! You can finally visit!” Carlos squealed and bounced with excitement. “I cannot wait! How soon can you be here? You go into the dog park, walk for a few days until you see the lighthouse in the distance and there’s a little town we’re building. I’ll be there waiting for you, sweetie. Oh, this is going to be so good! Mmhmm. So. Good.”  
Cecil laughed as Carlos giggled and talked at top speed, like he always did when he was pumped about something. “I know, right! I have directions and everything.” He let out a sigh.  
“Oh, sweetie, what’s wrong? Ceece? You can tell me.” Carlos, concern in his voice. “You tell everyone nearly everything so you can tell me what’s bothering you.”  
Cecil sighed again. “Ugh there might be a delay. I am officially on vacation and that’s awesome! But…”  
“But? Oh my love talk to me too, imagine I’m your favorite microphone.”  
Cecil smiled although Carlos couldn’t see. “I am not allowed to leave the station until I have recorded a show to play in my absence. I am sitting here in a studio with boxes full of _so many_ Fidelipac cartridges. I have some old recordings of my earlier shows and some of Leonard’s, you know, I told you about him?”  
“The _Voice of Night Vale_ before you? Is he still alive?”  
“That’s him! So I have all these cartridges and some blanks and Station Management want me to put together a highlights show to play when I am away.”  
“Oh that’s so sweet, honey, your listeners will miss you!” Carlos’s sighs joined Cecil’s. “But not as much as I do. Can I help?”  
“I’d like you to help. I hate this and I wish I was in the dog park already, walking miles across empty, lifeless sand just to see you again. Still, at least they got me the latest recording equipment. I mean, this studio is State. Of. The. Art! The date stamp on the label of the recording machine in front of me says… yep… 1984! Can you believe they got something so modern just for me?”

Carlos settled with his phone on speaker mode beside him in the lounge corner of his lab in the new town built from discarded materials, scavenged from around the dog park inner walls. Cecil read the labels on some of the “carts” as he called them, and Carlos said yes or no depending on whether or not he thought they sounded interesting.  
“Hmm, this one,” Cecil lifted his glasses onto the top of his head and squinted at the label, “I don’t know… Intern Cecil’s first live broadca—“  
“Yes! You have to play that. I want to hear it. Can I hear it now? Can you play it down the phone to me?” Carlos grinned into the air.  
“Ooh spoilers! Carlos! My favorite scientist should know better,” Cecil tutted. “I don’t know if I should. I mean, won’t you want to listen to the whole show? See how I make everything fit together so neatly?”  
Carlos laughed. “Am I really your favorite scientist? You mean that, sweetheart?”  
Cecil hummed and pretended to think. “Hmmm, yeah, I think of all the scientists I know, you are definitely the cleverest, most handsome and sweetest. My favorite. By far. Who could possibly be better for me than my Carlos?”

Carlos let out a sudden giggle. “I can think of one!”  
The Voice low and drawn out, “Go-o-o… o-o-on?”  
“Well, honey, you know how you’re really into science these days?”  
Cecil sniggered _”scientists actually”_  
Carlos snorted. “And you’re really into radio?”  
“Mmm the scientific evidence is in the airwaves! And on all these carts. I really have to sort them out.”  
“So you’re really into scientists and you’re really into radio. How _much_ would you be really into a radio-scientist?”  
Cecil’s giggle turned into a full laugh. “Carlos, if you know a real radio-scientist you better not introduce us or I may actually die of joy. Oh, are they handsome? As lovely as you? I bet they’re not.”  
Carlos waited for Cecil to regain his composure. “I’m going to send you a picture of a scientist called Marconi. I think you’ll like him although he died in the thirties. I’ll send it and call you right back, right back, I promise. Okay honey?”  
“Okay, but don’t be long, remember your perception of minutes is not the same as mine when I’m waiting to hear your voice again.”

Cecil unearthed his charger, connected his phone and spent a few minutes stacking cartridges in chronological order as best he could. They went from his first test recordings, which made him shudder with embarrassment at his teenage self’s inability to control his exuberance and his not-yet-adult voice. He remembered those days as a young intern, having to record and re-record, concentrating on keeping his presentation professional. Cecil chose his first live outdoor broadcast for Leonard’s show, the cart Carlos had asked to hear, and put it on the “yes” pile.

His phone binged to announce an email. He opened it and smiled at the message.  
_I think he’s handsome, do I need to be jealous?_  
There was a link. Cecil clicked and a picture opened slowly. Cecil sniggered and went back to sorting cartridges. The “yes” pile gained a couple more members while the “no” pile towered precariously and threatened to collapse under its own wobbly weight.

After an hour or so, Cecil’s phone rang.  
“At last! My lovely science-feller, you are far more handsome than your radio-scientist. He does have a certain something about him, though. I bet he could teach me all sorts of things.”  
Carlos laughed. “Sorry for the delay. It was only a few minutes for me although I did get engrossed in reading a little further into Italian politics, but I didn’t really understand much. There is a _lot_ of it and none of it is very scientific. How is your recording going? Have you finished already? Are you on your way here to me?”  
Cecil groaned. “Oh I wish! This is so difficult. There are so many old recordings and I have to find the right part of each one, cue it up, transfer it to a new cart, Ugh. It will take for- _ever_ and I want to be with you! Not stuck in this shiny new studio playing around with my new equipment and making the best best-of show in the history of Community Radio!”  
Carlos closed his eyes. “Mmhmm, I can picture you right now, I bet you’re sitting on the floor with your legs crossed, your glasses perched on your head in that way that makes you look so cute, and you’re peering at labels and making piles and deciding, only you can’t decide because all of your old shows are so good you can’t choose the best because they’re all the best! _You’re_ the best. If I was there with you I’d be distracting you something awful.” Carlos deepened and lowered his voice. “Wanna know what I’d do, exactly? If I was there with you now?”

Twenty minutes later, Cecil felt better but was no further forward with his clips show. He lay on the floor of the studio, almost filling the available area, despairing into the ether. Carlos tried to console him.  
“Ceece, sweetie, please don’t be upset, please don’t use that honey voice to cry! You can do this! It just takes time, the sooner you start the sooner you will finish and I will stay with you for as long as your phone has power. Mine won’t run out.”  
“Ca-a-arlos, this is an impossible task! You can’t see how many carts are in each box and how many boxes there are! Do you know just _how long_ I have been in radio? I don’t but it’s a long, long time. I could be here for two weeks just to make one stupid show!”  
Carlos sighed. “Oh my love, if it is really an impossible task then don’t do it. Don’t even try any more. Make up a new task.” Carlos paused, an idea emerging like a bowling ball popping out from the ball retrieval system and rolling into the rack. “Make up your own show. Make it all up! I’ll help you!”

Cecil breathed deep and dried his tears. “Oh I can’t do that, it would be so unprofessional!”  
Carlos argued back, “But you could do it real quick, use the clips you already picked out and some of Leonard Burton doing links? You are real good at making up stories and making them sound real convincing. Remember that time you convinced me that Valentine’s Day was some kind of horror show massacre because you forgot to get me flowers?”  
Cecil laughed. “That was one of my _best!_ We spent all day holed up at home with the curtains closed, refusing to answer the phone.”  
Carlos agreed. “It was a very nice day. Mmhmm. The best Valentine’s Day _ever._ We should totally do that again when we see each other. Real soon.”  
“Yes we should do that. Several times.”

Cecil sat up and looked at the carts he had selected. There were three. His first broadcast on his own, giggly and puppyish, so keen to please. The second, a collection of links recorded by Leonard for when he had to make clips shows. The third, a joke announcement he had made for Leonard to play one April Fool’s Day when he decided to fake his own grisly death, but chickened out at the last minute. In revenge, Leonard had mocked up a mono recording on a hissy old C46 one drunken evening from Cecil’s early recordings, which sounded like his young protégé being choked to death. Cecil had not found that cassette funny at all.

Cecil sniggered, grinned and loaded carts into the playback and record cradles. He broke the comfortable silence they so often shared during calls.  
“You could be on to something there, Carlos! I report the news usually but if I’m clearly not present to report, then what news will there be? It might as well be something I prepared in advance, right?”  
Carlos sighed in relief. “You are so right! Cecil, you are going to make this show real quick and come to me?”  
“Yes! Why not. Will you stay on the phone while I do all that? You can tell me more about your radio-scientist friend.”  
“Cecil, you do know I have never actually met Marconi, Hmm?”  
“You had a picture of him on your phone!”  
Carlos sighed dramatically. “A scientist can dream, right?”  
Cecil feigned offense. “Hey, I thought you only dreamed about me! You don’t feel, maybe, a little… _inadequate_ beside someone with such a long Wikipedia entry?”  
Carlos crowed. “Oh sweetie no, not at all. Maybe I would feel a little inferior if he was a _proper_ scientist like me, but he studied electronics and not _science!_ Besides, I know you love me and that’s what matters the most.”

Cecil stopped for a moment, eyes closed and a smile on his face. “Aww, my beautifully imperfect scientist. You know it.” He frowned at the mess in the studio. “As you pointed out, the variable nature of time notwithstanding, the sooner I get started the sooner I will finish.”

Four hours later, Cecil held up a cartridge labelled _Voice of Night Vale [Best Of]_ , forgetting that Carlos couldn’t see it. He unplugged his phone from its charger, clicked it off speaker and [sang](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvo7z3LAk10%20) into the mouthpiece.


End file.
